Sunday, August 18, 2013

31 Plays in 31 Days - User Agreement

User Agreement

By Claire Rice

CHARACTERS

CamilleA
woman at the top of the food chain.

NeilA man who doesn’t know where he is.

TIME AND PLACE

The near possible future.

Camille sits in a plush old office in Washington DC.Old wood, old leather, the smell of cigars
and whiskey.This is the office of an
old-time newspaper man.But Camille is
new money.She is fashionable and fits
in just fine with her surroundings, but she didn’t build the room she’s sitting
in.

Neil enters.He doesn’t belong.He’s a new school government man.He comes from a great deal of money, but he
doesn’t understand how it is made.

CamilleHello
Neil.

NeilCamille.It’s good to see you.

CamilleI’m
sorry I kept you waiting.

NeilNot
at all.It’s perfectly all right.

CamilleHow
have you been? How are the kids?

NeilGreat.Just great.Darcy is graduating middle school tomorrow.There’s some sort of commencement ceremony.

CamilleI feel like I remember Andy had one
too.It seemed sort of superfluous at
the time.A little bit of a let
down.Here you are kid, your last day as
a big fish.Here you go.Enjoy being a little fish again.

NeilYeah, well, Darcy –

CamilleSo what did you want to meet about?

NeilWell, to tell you the truth, I
was hoping to avoid having this meeting but –

CamilleSomething’s are better face-to-face.I get it.I’ve had enough board meetings done over one computer screen or another
to know the value of looking a man in his eyes.Though, there is always the walk of shame.Somehow it feels nicer to leave a bad meeting
and just walk a couple of feet to your office or snap off a screen.My favorite is slamming my laptop shut.Still, though, there’s nothing like being
able to smell a person’s perfume and really hear the breath as it moves in and
out of their lungs.

NeilRight. Yeah.I never thought of it that way before.

CamilleDo you need a coffee or anything?
Water?

NeilNo, I’m fine.

CamilleAre you sure?We just started getting in this really great
premium coffee.We’re buying that Vos
water now, you want some of that?It’s really
good.

NeilNo, really –

CamilleI read an article yesterday, in the
Post actually, that people who turn down gifts do it because they think it puts
them in control, but it just makes them weaker.Funny isn’t it?

NeilI don’t believe everything I
read in the papers.

CamilleNeither do I, and I print the damn
things.When I decided to buy a whole
newspaper my partners all thought I was crazy, but I’m a sucker for a garage
sale. Relevancy never came so cheaply.

NeilI think we’ve gone around and
around long enough.I know who’s in
control here and I don’t need it shoved in my face Camille.

CamilleI don’t know what you’re talking
about.

NeilCut the crap.Can we just get to it?

CamilleI don’t know what to tell you,
Neil.I’ve seen the government’s request
and I’ve read the article in question.I’ve decided we’re printing it as is.

NeilI don’t think you understand
the ramifications –

CamilleI think the public has the right to
know.

NeilYou’re putting the lives of our
men and women overseas at risk.

CamilleThey are already at risk.

NeilWe’ve been closing the net
round this group for years.This will
put people in the field at risk of discovery.

CamilleYou are assassinating men and women
without cause.

NeilYou pulled the information for
that story directly out of a cloud-computing…thing…that you sold us!You just reached in and took it!

CamilleI printed it ten minutes ago while
you were waiting in the front office.

NeilBitch!

CamillePrinted is a funny word.I didn’t print it.I put it up on the website and I tagged
it.I wanted to run into the newsroom
and yell “Stop the presses!” But it turns out that there aren’t really presses
any more and there isn’t a newsroom either.

NeilHow dare you?

CamilleYou know, I expected more from
you.Neil Merchant.Head of the NSA.You’ve sat across from warlords and
terrorists.Part of me wondered what I
would be going up against when I took you on.Turns out, it wasn’t much.

NeilI’ll take you to court.

CamilleDo it.I dare you.It’ll make great press.

NeilYou’ll lose.

CamilleI’ll win.The information is mine to do with what I
want.

NeilIt’s the government’s.

CamilleIt’s my cloud.

NeilIt’s my information.

CamilleDidn’t you read the fine print?

NeilWhat fine print?

CamilleI bet you had some low-level agent
sign up for it years ago.Just to put up
some non-information; office party pictures, an extension list, and maybe a
budget or two.Before you knew it, you
were coming back to me asking if I could secure a whole server, a whole server
room, a whole bunker for NSA secrets and lies.

NeilBut the information isn’t
yours.You’re a contractor.

CamilleWho do you think I am? American Storage?
U-haul?

NeilThe information belongs to the
government.

CamilleThe information belongs to the American
people.

NeilAre you kidding me with this
high and mighty bull?Are you going to
tell me the theft of classified information by a publicly traded American
company is for the good of society?

CamilleI’m telling you if you put it in my
house it belongs to me.

NeilIf I put my money in a bank –

CamilleIt belongs to the bank if you signed
an agreement saying it belonged to the bank.

NeilI don’t think any of us ever
had any idea you would buy a newspaper.

CamilleOr that I would use my own storeroom
for my news items.We are the third
estate.The last check and balance.

NeilYou started out as a book
retailer.

CamilleI put in plain sight material people
wanted and couldn’t get their hands on any other way.

NeilYou are making money off the
backs of dead ambassadors and civilians who died in the name of democracy.

CamilleI make money off of children who work
their fingers to the bone to feed families on farms in China.I make money off of rednecks who can’t read,
but work in my warehouses boxing books.I make money off of code monkeys in India who know more about your
secrets then either of us ever will.I
make money off of people who just want a good cup of coffee in the morning, a
wife who isn’t afraid to take her kids to school, and a little poke before they
head off to dream land.I make money off
of people who want to think about anything other than the fact that they’ve
taken the same bus to work every day for ten years and they’ve hated every
minute of it.I make money.That’s my ambition.That’s my business.That’s my whole life.When I die they’ll say “She made a lot of
money.”

NeilIt’s treason.

CamillePossibly.It’s possibly worse.But I’ll tell you what it is for sure: a
taste.The story I printed today is
about a terrorist cell in Algeria.My
political advisors say it’s a nothing story.But what it is for sure is a taste of what I have access to.

NeilIt’s blackmail.

CamilleDefinitely.

NeilWhat do you want?

CamilleRight now, nothing.I just want to keep you in my back
pocket.You know what? I’ve got a
meeting in ten that I need to prepare for.Why don’t you show yourself out.